To cope with an intense and competitive environment, intermodal freight transport operators have increasingly adopted business practices —like horizontal and vertical business integration—which aim to reduce the operational costs, increase the profit margins, and improve their competitive position in the market. These strategies and business practices could potentially affect the competition level in the IFT market by increasing the market concentration. The impact can be on the separate submarkets (e.g., transshipment market or main-haulage market) or the whole market for IFT services at the network level. To investigate the impact of these business practices on the market structure of IFT networks, we present a model to analyze the market structure of IFT submarkets and extend the results to the network level. Using this multi-level market analysis model, we can evaluate the decisions made by firms and the market outcomes that result. The application of the presented model is also illustrated using a numerical example. The numerical example shows, for instance, that the impact of a merger, as a business practice, on the competition level in an IFT market —and its submarkets— depends on the merger type (horizontal and vertical). Furthermore, different indicators that “represent” market structure and competition, might react differently to a merger in an IFT network.

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The analysis of market structure and concentration measures for the Intermodal Freight Transport (IFT) market is important to avoid market failure and to find the areas for policy making to promote IFT market share. This analysis can be performed for separate segments, for example, the market for transshipment service or the market for main-haulage service. However, due to the multistage characteristic of IFT service, the segmental analysis gives an incomplete view of the IFT market at the network level. In a previous paper (Saeedi et al., 2017), we present the Intermodal Freight Transport Market Structure (IFTMS) model to conduct a network-based study of the IFTMS in which distinctive actors (i.e., pre/post haulage operators, terminals, rail/barge operators, transport chains, and corridors) are competing at different levels inside distinctive markets to deliver an integrated IFT service. There are two main challenges in the application of IFTMS model in real cases, for example, the European IFT network. First, the definition of the geographical and spatial border of the transshipment market areas is needed to determine which actors are potentially competing for a specific service demand. The second challenge is the lack of disaggregated data and the consistency of existing data in nodes (i.e., the transshipment areas) and links (i.e., the rail and barge operators). To cope with these challenges, we develop a four-step methodology in which a model-based approach is used to define the geographic boundaries of the transshipment submarkets and provide detailed and consistent data for market analysis. We also apply the IFTMS model to study the market structure of European intermodal network. Our analysis shows that the majority of transshipment markets as well as main-haulage markets are highly concentrated markets. The corridor markets – which include the IFT chains – are unconcentrated markets. Furthermore, the majority of corridors in the European Union are inside highly concentrated origin-destination markets.

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Shipping companies are striving to optimize their empty container repositioning strategies which also contribute to reduced congestion and environmental improvements. In this paper we propose a multi-commodity model that makes an explicit distinction between flows of non-damaged containers, on the one hand, and flows of damaged containers, on the other. The model is tailored for the repositioning of these containers in the representative setting of a network of off-dock empty depots, ocean terminals, and inland terminals. In our case study, cost savings of up to 17% are found, depending on the composition of the network, container type, and particular evacuation and repositioning strategy. In particular, directly transporting containers from inland terminals to other inland terminals (direct repositioning) results in cost savings of up to 15% for dry containers and up to 17% for reefer containers. Furthermore, the total costs might be optimized by actually preventing the container failure from occurring possibly leading to considerable additional cost reductions. Finally, exporting damaged containers might seem to be the optimal solution from a regional cost perspective, but, this does not necessarily lead to total cost optimization from the global perspective.

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The global distribution of goods involving maritime transport makes use of standardized loading units, which are also known as maritime containers, progressively. It is not uncommon to use these containers beyond the transport between seaports, i.e. the goods are transported in containers from origin to destination in the hinterland, e.g. from supplier factory to buyer distribution centre. Containers are of various sizes and are often re-used several times in the supply chain. This requires a container, once unloaded and emptied, to be re-positioned to another location in the hinterland, where it is loaded with new cargo for its next voyage. The repositioning of empty containers is a complex management and logistics problem, which involves multiple organizations. In this technical paper, we touch upon a few of these intricacies and suggest directions for further exploration to resolve the issues at hand. @en

Intermodal freight transport has been discussed for decades as an alternative to unimodal road transport. However, it still does not represent a significant portion of the total freight market. A new and promising possibility to improve the performance of freight systems is the synchromodal design of hinterland transport systems. A cornerstone for synchromodality is an integrated view in the design and operation of intermodal transport. A main benefit of this integrated view is an improved flexibility in mode choice in hinterland transport. This paper gives a detailed description of this integrated view for synchromodal freight transport. Based on this description, a mathematical model for designing service schedules for synchromodal freight transport systems is also presented. The benefits of providing integrated transport services compared to separately planned transport services are also discussed for a case in the hinterland network of the Port of Rotterdam.

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This paper analyses structures of the inland terminal markets that constitutes one of the main parts of the intermodal freight transport supply chains markets, by developing two different heuristic approaches to define the market. The main questions that this paper will answer are: 1. how can the terminal market be defined, 2. how can limited data about terminals be used to analyse the market structure, and 3. what are the structures of different terminal submarkets in the European Union. Although a lot of work has been done on intermodal freight transport, little has been done on quantitative analysis of intermodal markets, especially intermodal terminal markets. This paper develops two different approaches comparatively to define inland terminal markets. The first approach segments the market using the distance of terminals from central points of demand, while the second approach uses the aggregate trade in each of the demand areas. The results of the two different approaches have been used to validate the approaches, and show that the both approaches could be used in situations we have limited data. By using concentration indexes to calculate the market structures of 18 main areas in the European Union, we find that the inland terminal markets in EU are oligopolistic markets, characterized mainly by high concentration. The north of EU shows less concentration than the central & southern regions. According to the second approach, the terminal markets have higher degree of concentration, in comparison to the first approach. In some market areas, barge terminals also play a role which results in lower concentration levels. The structure of terminal markets suggests that terminals have a favorable negotiation power in the intermodal freight transport supply chains, which could be used as an important parameter to construct coordinated intermodal freight transport supply chains, because coordination in supply chains can be achieved by creating incentives for the parties in the chain. However, the negotiating power of supply chain actors plays a role as well.@en